No job is easy -- otherwise we wouldn't get paid and instead call it a hobby.

When I was younger, I ran from job to job because I thought the places I worked were bad. I finally realized the places and jobs weren't bad but my own reaction.Skip to contentwas negative.

Instead of changing jobs, I changed perspective.

Regardless, there will be bad days and good days, bad week and good weeks. I keep moving through them all understanding the long run will overall be good, great, wonderful.

Tough week this week.

And then two wonderful things happened today.

A coincidence even.

This morning Mrs. Stoppelkamp called and left a message. She's a reader from my time in Burlington, North Carolina and one of the sweetest people I've met in my travels. She called me regularly to talk about columns. She wrote and submitted her own. One day she stopped at the newspaper because during her morning prayers, Mrs. Stoppelkamp heard a message to hug me. It turned out to be my birthday. So I received a nice hug from Mrs. Stoppelkamp.

I called her back today. We caught up and both cried a little bit. We promised to do a better job of staying in touch and even talked about writing poetry together. She's a poet, I am not. My poems stink like someone spilling Limburger cheese on a car manifold and then driving 600 miles. Not uncommon in Wisconsin.

It was a pretty and delicate conversation after a number of brutal unpleasantries.

Within a couple of hours, I received an email from a local reader who has been buying a copy of my local newspaper for the last year on behalf of Mrs. Stoppelkamp. The email asked to continue her subscription so long as she was still with us.

Certainly people like to hate. For some it's their pasttime.

But today, at the end of a long, unpleasant week, I was reminded of the wonderful nature of my fellow humans.

Peace unto Ukraine and peace and dear distant friends unto all of you my brothers and sisters.